Burocracy at best
by delos13
Summary: You are nothing without me" - said Alexander to Hephaistion. There were generals who agreed, there were generals who disagreed. But what about the others?


A/N#1: this story written as a birthday present to my friend Jun.

A/N #2: this is fictional story. Please treat it as such. All the characters belong to themselves and to history.

Readers comments are treasured and appreciated.

* * *

Alexander woke up with a heavy headache and a feeling that somebody tossed his body from corner to corner all night long. He vaguely remembered that his current drinking bout was nothing else but a fruitless attempt to wash out the awful aftertaste of the stupid words he said to Hephaistion in front of the whole Army, but nobody made it easy for him. Hephaistion buried himself in the innumerable amount of duties that were assigned to him by Alexander in a course of all those years together, Krateros behaved like nothing happened, and all other generals tried to avoid him as much as possible.

Alexander shook his head and stretched his hand to grab a rhyton of wine to quench his thirst and dull his memory; he was rather successful at his task for he didn't remember how many days already passed since the incident. But now he almost retched at the first swig of the wine he took because of its awful taste that couldn't be masked despite somebody's efforts to add some strong spices.

"Amphares," roared the king, "what kind of poison you put into this jug? Dionysus will curse you for eternity if you dare to call this concoction some sort of wine!"

The frightened page made immediate appearance and stood before the king shifting from one foot to the other.

"I am very sorry, my king," he managed at last, "but it's the best I could get."

"It's the best you could get?" the king stared incredulously at his page, "Did I conquer all the Asia and India only to be given this piss instead of proper wine?"

"N-no, my king," Amphares didn't know where to look, "but it's really the best I could get; and I have to trade it with Theocles, I promised him to convince Nadine to come to his tent tonight, he tried to persuade her for so long; I promised Nadine…"

"Amphares, do I really look like I care about that?! What happened to the proper wine? I can hardly believe that somebody managed to drink it all; did somebody get drank and demolished all our stock? Or Dionysus cursed our army and turned all the wine into the water?"

"No, but Phemid says we reached our quota long time ago and he can't give us more."

"Who in Hades is Phemid?"

"He is the Head of Food and other Sustenance supplies under Hephaistion. You approved his appointment yourself after we…."

"All right, I remember him now but who does he think he is, denying his king a good quality wine?" incredulously asked Alexander.

Amphares nervously looked from side to side not quite sure how to proceed, "He says when you appointed him you told him to take good care of food supplies, to make sure that everybody gets their apportioned part and no more."

"It seems that up until now he had no problems with supplying me with wine," snickered Alexander. He tried to take another sip from the rhyton but very quickly put it aside with disgust.

"Apparently, your consumption of wine was always over the quota you yourself set up in the past, but Hephaistion always overruled your own orders and made sure that you get the best of everything regardless of how much you already consumed. Now, Phemid argues, when you told so openly before the whole army that Hephaistion is nothing without you, there is no need to comply with his orders anymore and Phemid can at last do as you once told him." Amphares didn't even dare to look at Alexander while repeating to the king what Phemid said so he didn't see how Alexander's eyes grew bigger and bigger while listening to what his page had to say.

Amphares was still intently staring at the floor when he heard Alexander words, cold as droplets of icicle, falling into the silence of the room.

"I thought Phemid was Hephaistion's man."

"Yes, he is, Your Majesty, but he says orders are orders."

Alexander wasn't sure but he thought that he could discern some sort of glee in his page voice. He wasn't surprised, he knew it quite well that despite the honor that was associated with serving the king, many young men eyed the position within Hephaistion circle for many different reasons.

"Well, Amphares, I'll take this issue of wine quota with Phemid and Hephaistion later, but for now, since I can't refresh my mind with some good wine, I need to take a bath. I hope it won't take long to heat the water. I want that gold Darius' bathtub, I hope nobody melted it?"

"No, my king, nobody would dare, but…"

"Don't tell me that Phemid declared that I can't take a bath in a gold bathtub."

"Oh, no, Phemid has nothing to do with that bathtub. But Alpenor ordered the safety inspection of all the equipment; he said that after the unfortunate accident at the party…"

"What party?"

Amphares signed and managed to tear his eyes from the floor only to direct them somewhere above Alexander's head.

"Your father's wedding party to Cleopatra. Remember, when the king fell of the couch?"

"Are you insane?!" asked Alexander in utter disbelieve.

"It's what Alpenor said. He insists that the safety of the king person should be taken very seriously, and nothing is going to happen to the king on his watch. He said he knows it from a very trustworthy source that your father fell not because he was drunk but because one of the couch's legs was broken and couch was unstable, this is what happened. So, the inspection of the bathtub revealed that the inner side of the bath top curve is not smooth enough, there are some rough edges and Alpenor is worried that you can accidently cut your finger when trying to get out of the tub."

"I can cut my finger?! How about I can cut his throat? This is unbelievable! How dares he to take my bath and…and….what exactly he is going to do with it?"

"He said he is going to put a work order to smooth the edges. He is trying to find workers qualified enough to work on it. Then he has to check with Leonnatus if those workers have sufficient security clearance to work on something used by the Great King."

"I am not sure he would live long enough to see the work done," hissed Alexander. "Go find me Bagoas."

"Yes, Your Majesty," too quickly to Alexander taste said the page and disappeared behind the curtains.

Alexander realized that despite the dull pain inside his head, lack of good wine and his page obvious desire to leave his presence, his own mood improved. Phemid and Alpenor were Hephaistion own people and it gladdened his heart that they stood behind his friend despite what was too eagerly seen by many in his army as Hephaistion's obvious fall from king's favor. He was sure that it wasn't the end of the dirty tricks that Hephaistion people were going to play on him and he decided to endure all of them silently and with little complain as a penitence for his disparaging words.

Alexander was brought back from his reverie by polite cough from Bagoas.

"You wanted to see me, my King?" quietly asked the eunuch.

"Yes, but what is that smell, Bagoas?" Alexander wrinkled his nose.

Bagoas went pale. "I am so sorry, my king," the young man almost started to stammer, "I didn't realize that it went so far, I will try to remedy that immediately."

"What," Alexander suddenly laughed, "somebody denied you the pleasure of using my bath?"

"I would never dare," Bagoas big black eyes became even bigger, "but there is no good water to bath, and I run out of my oils, I tried to buy some on the market, but these people are savages, they don't use oils, and Ranshad won't give me oils that I asked him for."

"He won't?" king didn't have to pretend to be surprised, "I thought he was a fan of yours?"

"I thought so too," dryly replied Bagoas, "but it seems that he is even bigger fan my lord Hephaistion."

"How so?" inquired Alexander. Despite admitting to himself that he was awfully wrong by saying those words to Hephaistion and trying to drink those words into oblivion for gods know how many days, he started to enjoy these small acts of petty revenge that Hephaistion men decided to inflict on Alexander and the people around him.

"Ranshad informed me that there are orders from Kleostratos to allot to everybody only certain amount of goods for personal use. He said you set an excellent example when you ordered to burn all the unnecessary things before we moved into India. He said that he intends to keep your act as a flaming example of how little a person needs."

"You could have argued that you can't appear before the king smelling badly."

"I tried but I was told that everybody is in the same situation; I tried to borrow from my future share of oils…"

"But?"

"I was told that I already exhausted my reserves many years into the future, and according to something they called statistical data eunuchs are not expected to live that long and since I am not able to have children I can't borrow against their future shares."

"Oh, this is good," Alexander tried unsuccessfully to suppress his laugh. "So, you accepted their verdict without further fight?"

"No," Bagoas pretended not to notice king's reaction to his story, "I wanted to construct a shower."

"What is shower?"

"That's a device I saw at the court of king Porus. It's like a waterfall, only very small. It brings constant flow of water into the bucket above the person head; there are holes in the bottom of the bucket and water flows from it. You can have such a device inside your room."

"Hmm, so, did you manage to build it?"

"No," Bagoas shook his head, "apparently, some time ago you gave orders that if anybody wants to erect anything for not military purpose, one should first to obtain a building permit."

"I don't remember ever giving such orders," thoughtfully responded the king.

"I think it happened before I came to serve you. Something to do with the late general Philotas bringing sand from Egypt for his palestra. You said it was in excess of anybody's needs and since then everybody had to obtain building permit. Engineering department was for a long time under Hephaistion supervision but he didn't enforce the policy very strictly, especially given the difficulty of collecting all the necessary signatures for approval."

"I would sign the necessary document for your, Bagoas."

"You can't sign for me, I am in your direct employ."

"Ah, this was very prudent of me. No favoritism. So, who could sign for those in my direct employ?"

"First, Dinocrates, to approve that construction is technically sound, but unfortunately, he is currently in Alexandria, in Egypt, supervising the erection of some temple, then, Harpalos, to approve the financial side, and though he ran off with half of your treasury again, he is still a mandatory signing authority. There are couple of other names on the list. Do you want to hear the rest of them?"

"No, not now. However, I remember that dancing pole in your quarters. How did you manage to get around my regulations then?"

Bagoas blushed.

"Yes, Bagoas? I can't hear your answer."

"I asked Hephaistion for help. It appears that you gave him authority to substitute any signature with his own, so he took pity on me in the past. But now his own staff won't accept his signature. They say you publicly revoked his rights."

"I did no such thing!" with vehemency that took him himself by surprise exclaimed Alexander. "Don't worry, Bagoas, I will sort it out. Go bring me some fresh clothes, if I can't take a bath, I can at least put on some clean attire."

"I am afraid, my king, there are no clean clothes left," desperately said Bagoas.

"I think this game went too far. What do you mean, no clean clothes left?"

"After the incident with….after you said that…after…well, you know…"

"Damn you, Bagoas, make it short!"

"After you told that Hephaistion was nothing without you, some took your words out of context, if there even was one,…"

"Bagoas!"

"I am sorry, my king, but I am not the only one struggling to understand. In any case, Laomedon declared that it's dangerous to leave the supply of the whole army in the hands of one man. He was backed by Krateros supporters and you was nowhere to say otherwise. So, for some time now the water supply is handled by Laomedon's people. It's just a couple of days but it's already a mess. Long story short, we don't have enough water for our needs and anyway, after Laomedon's lieutenants started to regulate the work of the laundry workers, we don't have enough people to wash all the dirty clothes on time. There is quite a back log."

"All right, I will deal with that as well. And Laomedon has absolutely no business reorganizing who does what in my army. Bring me any clothes to put on. I am going to pay a visit to some of my generals."

"My king, you should consider inviting those generals to your tent."

"Why is that?" suspiciously asked Alexander.

"Honestly, the lack of perfumed oils or clean clothes are the least of our hygiene problems."

"Oh? What else?"

"The smell outside is rather unpleasant."

"Because?"

"There was a need to dig new latrines."

"And?"

"Eumenus declared that Hephaistion always gave the wrong instructions and as a result the new latrines needed to be dug too often. He came up with his own plan and gave new orders. However, he failed to take into account the prevalent direction of the wind in this time of the year and the depth of the latrines was too shallow, and so, eh, there is a need to dig new ones again but nobody wants to take the responsibility."

Alexander snorted. "I know a perfect candidate. Now, tell Amphares to bring me a horse. I'll talk to my generals later. I will go for a ride. Just me and a few bodyguards."

"I think there may be a problem." Bagoas bowed politely again.

"What now?" impatiently asked the king. "Somebody stole all our horses? My bodyguards don't want to serve me anymore?"

"Oh, no, my king, nothing like that," assured him Bagoas. "After your great Bucephalus died, you lamented that you didn't take enough care of him. Aretas, your chief groom, decided to remedy the situation. It looks like from now on, all horses should have a proper rest and a special vet has to give them inspection once a month and issue a clean bill of health. Every horse should have a medical chart easily available for vet to review. The last inspection in your stables was two days ago and the vet found some documents missing, and then some documents were not signed at all, some not dated, sometimes the same horse name was written differently and the vet wasn't sure it's the same horse."

"Can I safely presume that the vet was one of those appointed by Hephaistion?"

"Yes, you can, my king."

"Is it all?"

"No, there is a matter of your bodyguards."

"What about them?"

"Apparently, they are working abnormal hours."

"You must be kidding me! What about my hours?"

"You are the king……..no one can say 'no' to you."

"Amphares!" barked the king. The page run into Alexander presence. "Fetch me my sword. And Bagoas, why you still didn't bring me any clothes?"

Bagoas quickly disappeared leaving the nervous page to face Alexander.

"If you are going to tell me that there is something wrong with my sword or it's unavailable for some stupid reason…."

"Your sword is fine, Your Majesty. The weaponry master just took to sharpen it."

Alexander uttered some low guttural sound and eyed his page suspiciously. "You seem to posses clean clothes. How come?"

"I borrowed from Cleoboul. He learned this trick from his master, to clean clothes on a stone with sand and very little water. If you wish, I can go and ask Hephaistion if he has a clean chiton to spare for you."

"No need," answered the king. "I will use whatever Bagoas brings to me. Give me your dagger, it's ridiculous that I don't even have a weapon to carry."

Short time afterwards, Alexander was striding in the direction of Hephaistion tent. He soon became aware that it was not where he remembered it to be. He stopped and frowned, uncertain as to where to go. Realizing his king predicament, Amphares pointed in the right direction and whispered, "When the smell became too much to bear, Hephaistion gave orders to reallocate his tent to the best possible place where the smell was minimal. Those who were not too proud too follow his example, did the same. We weren't sure what your wishes would be, so we left your tent as is. You didn't complain."

Alexander didn't respond. Funny jokes apart, he had no idea how to mend his relationship with Hephaistion after what happened, how to make his whole Army to understand what was the real place of Hephaistion in his heart and in his life. "I'll go with the flow," decided Alexander as he nodded to Cleoboul, Hephaistion page on duty and Leocrates, Hephaistion chief of staff.

"I came to see your master," declared Alexander.

"Do you have an appointment?" calmly asked Leocrates.


End file.
